University of Mississippi

Karen Raber

After beginning my career with scholarship on early modern women writers, I’ve moved into the newly burgeoning fields of animal studies and ecocriticism. I’m always especially interested in the details of early modern everyday life in all its bizarre complexity, hence some of my recent work on pearls, or about discourses that shaped Renaissance conceptions of the body and its faculties. My new book project examines the nuances of embodied existence as it was shared by early modern human and non-human animals: in it, I deal with the function of animals in shaping the practice of anatomizing the body; their role in the negotiation and definition of urban space and in the contestation of land boundaries and legal rights; the histories and meanings animals convey when turned into household objects; and the ways they complicate early modern sensory existence. Outside of academics, I compete in FEI level dressage, and live with my husband, six cats, two horses, and a dog.

Education

  • Ph.D., University of California, San Diego (1995)
  • M.A., Univ. of California, San Diego (1992)
  • B.A., Yale University (1983)

Research Interests

  • Early modern British literature and culture
  • Early modern women writers feminist theory
  • Cultural studies
  • Horses and horsemanship in early modern England/Europe
  • Animal Studies
  • Ecocriticism

Selected books

  • Early Modern Ecostudies: From Shakespeare to the Florentine Codex, coedited with Tom Hallock and Ivo Kamps,. New York: Palgrave 2009.
  • Ed., Elizabeth Cary, Vol. 4, Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England, 1550-1700. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2009.
  • The Culture of the Horse: Status, Discipline, and Identity in the Early Modern World, co-edited with Treva Tucker. New York: Palgrave Press, 2005.
  • William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: Texts and Contexts, co-edited with Ivo Kamps. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2004.
  • Dramatic Difference: Gender, Class and Genre in the Early Modern Closet Drama. Univ. of Delaware Press, 2001.

Selected articles and chapters in books

  • “Animal Bodies: Recontextualizing the Animal in Shakespeare’s World,” in “Ecocritical Shakespeare,” ed. Linda Bruckner and Daniel Brayton, forthcoming from Ashgate Press.
  • “Chains of Pearls: Gender, Property, Identity,” in “Accessorizing the Renaissance,” ed. Bella Mirabella, forthcoming from Routledge Press.
  • “How to do things with Animals: Thoughts on/with the Early Modern Cat,” in Early Modern Ecostudies: From Shakespeare to the Florentine Codex, ed. Tom Hallock, Ivo Kamps, and Karen Raber (New York: Palgrave, 2009), 93-114.
  • “From Sheep to Meat, From Pets to People: Animal Domestication 1600-1800″ in A Cultural History of Animals, Vol. IV: 1600-1800, ed. Matthew Senior, (London: Berg, 2007), 73-99.
  • “Michel Foucault and the Spectre of War,” in Historicizing Theory, ed. Peter Herman (New York: SUNY Press, 2003), 49-67.
  • “‘Our wits joined as in Matrimony’: Margaret Cavendish and the Drama of Authority,”English Literary Renaissance (ELR) 28:2 (Autumn 1998): 464-93.
  • “‘Reasonable Creatures’: William Cavendish and the Art of Dressage in Early Modern England,” in Renaissance Culture and the Everyday, ed. Patricia Fumerton. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 42-66.
  • “Gender and the Political Subject in Elizabeth Cary’s Tragedie of Mariam,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1800, Spring 1995, Vol. 33, 321-43.

Office
W203 Bondurant Hall
662-915-7049
kraber at olemiss.edu